Once upon a time Uncle Sam allowed citizens to purchase ammunition that the nation's armed forces no longer wanted. While not nearly the deal it seemed (said citizens had already paid for the ammunition once), it still beat commercial prices for reasonable quality bulk ammunition.
This is not a photo of any such ammunition. In an effort to make things less efficient, laws were passed requiring surplus ammo to be de-milled. This generally involves separating bullet, powder, and primer. After being broken into components, each separate component can be sold for reuse. Military components being supplied by the lowest bidder, no one can tell what sort of powder is used, so it is tossed. The primers probably don't survive the de-milling process (they are rather sensitive to shock and other forms of abuse.) Sevaral companies purchase the remaining components (bullet and case) to reassemble them with commercial powder and primers.
The head stamp on the case facing the camera shows that it was manufactured at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in 1969. The bullet is likely of similar vintage.
I've now spent far longer typing background info than I did taking the photo...
/rl
2 comments:
Good story, good photo!
Say, anyone know if there's an RSS feed for *all* comments? I can only find the main blog RSS and individual post comments, but not all comments.
In the blog's settings menu there's a "Comment Notification Email" section in the "Comments" tab that I put my email address in to a while back. It is kind of annoying, but it does indeed send mail whenever there is a new comment...
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